Public

"Record high global food prices showed no sign of relenting following a rash of catastrophic weather, highlighted by a major U.S. snowstorm and a cyclone in Australia, which could put yet more pressure on prices and spark further unrest around the world."

"Environment Canada enforcement officers launched hundreds of investigations, typed up thousands of warnings and carried out tens of thousands of inspections over a recent seven-year stretch. But over that period they nailed down only 32 convictions – putting the annual average at less than five."

"The Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces rules that affect the U.S. economy from factories to farms, is the No. 1 target of complaints from business groups collected by House Republican leaders." The rules also protect public health.

Since early fall 2010 there have been thousands of minor earthquakes around Guy, Arkansas. Some residents think the earthquake swarm is connected to the onset of gas drilling in the local shale formation.

"The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington's political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee."

"Federal regulators have declined to release emergency response details and worst-case spill estimates for a pipeline system that carries Canadian oil-sands crude to the United States, drawing charges of excessive secrecy from the advocacy group that sought the data."

An Associated Press investigation explains how federal regulators leave safety up to gas pipelines and utilities, whose profit-seeking decisions on safety cause fatal disasters like the one in San Bruno, Calif., that killed eight and destroyed 55 homes.